Project Bentley

NickXX said:
Seriously impressive stuff taking on this sort of car.

I was intrigued from your original description as to what it would look like. Really didn't expect to see the car in those pictures!! Looks superb :cool:

Do you have any examples of the comedy Bentley parts pricing? I want to know quite how mad your friend is :p.
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Take the alternator. I know for a fact that it's just an ordinary Delco item inside. But because it's for a Bentley, you have to pay £600 + VAT and delivery. Over £600, for an alternator. *sigh*

Body parts aren't cheap, glass is eye-wateringly expensive, and electrical stuff like switch panels and motors sent us down the route of mending rather than replacing since we'd spend all of his money.

Muffin` said:
Did they use magents to hold the trim together like they do in modern day Bentleys? If so, does it rattle ? :p
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Not much in the way of rattles. Trim inside is generally held on by self-tappers or brass screws and cup washers. Trim outside is held on with clips, of which we have plenty of spares now!
 
I've hesitated to post about this, since repeating the story a few times seems to cause my mate a bit of pain, but....eh, why not? :)

After we got the drivers door mirror sorted between us, my dear demented friend decided that the other mirror would benefit from a bit of maintenance. So he took it apart, made sure the motors were completely free to move, and so on. Then it came to refitting everything. In a spectacularly unlucky move, he got the centre ball-and-socket connection attached first (the mirror glass attaches to a plastic backing plate with sockets, the motors have lever arms with ball joints on their ends, and there's a centre ball on the motor mount corresponding to the centre socket). If you get the centre in first, you can't do the other two. Unfortunately, the mirror glass cracked as soon as he tried to detach the assembley from the centre.

D'oh! New glass is ~£66 + VAT and del. Botheration.

A call to a very good and friendly parts supplier for Bentleys and Royces that we use has sorted the car out with some mirror glass for a little less than that (though still not exactly pennies). Another problem seems to have kicked up in the meantime though - the old girl has taken this moment to start running rough again. We'll whip the plugs out just to see if there's anything obvious wrong, but I'm putting it down to the weather and an imperfectly set-up engine right now.
 
Was the issue with the Mirror actually a fault with the mirror itself then?

I'm not sure how it differs on Mulsanne cars, but on Spirit/Turbo R cars the mirror movement is linked in with the driver's Seat ECU. When you mentioned the seat adjustment and mirror issues together, I assumed it was a seat ECU problem!
 
I like that. I just watched the entire Wheeler Dealers episode as linked by Firestar where they restored the Bentley Mulsane, if I had been there when they sold it, there is a very strong possibility I would have bought it :D ...I thought it looked great when they had finished with it, although I'd have preferred the seats in a grey leather myself, but the blue still looked great when they had restored it.

JRS, I think your friend's would look much better with the mesh grill, I’m not a fan of the old 80s vertical one, but none the less, looks really good still.
 
Joshy said:
Was the issue with the Mirror actually a fault with the mirror itself then?

I'm not sure how it differs on Mulsanne cars, but on Spirit/Turbo R cars the mirror movement is linked in with the driver's Seat ECU. When you mentioned the seat adjustment and mirror issues together, I assumed it was a seat ECU problem!
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As near as I can tell, the system went through several designs. Initially, the mirror controls weren't tied into the seat memory unit. On this car, it was simply a gummed up motor preventing the drivers door mirror from adjusting correctly (though we re-did the wiring from mirror to inside the door as we weren't happy with it).

Moeks said:
JRS, I think your friend's would look much better with the mesh grill, I’m not a fan of the old 80s vertical one, but none the less, looks really good still.
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Several problems with going to the mesh look.

1) It makes the car look like a Bentley Eight (ah, snobbery....), or like you're trying to make an older Bentley look like a much later one. I think we went far enough with the colour coding, I've seen people even fit later panels, bumpers, lights....
2) The mesh, if you don't bodge it with chicken wire as some car restoration TV shows might do and use a proper matrix grill assembly from a parts supplier like Montague & Co or Flying Spares, costs over £700. And that money could be spent on much better stuff. Like fuel.

:D
 
THis headunit might look better

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Built in satnav too.
 
So, the plugs were taken out the other day. All of them bar one was coated in carbon deposits. The other was coated in carbon deposits AND a little bit of other muck from having not been tightened in properly and causing some leakage. New plugs back in (utter nightmare getting to the ones at the firewall end of the engine, so much stuff in the way). Car running okay. I then took it on an extended run to Brum airport and back to a) pick my parents up and b) give it a proper run rather than just a jaunt down the A38 to the Barton turn and back. Car running very okay.

Guess we found the source of the twittering sound anyway. As I said, the plug in cylinder 4 (think it was 4) wasn't in very tight when we came to take it out. Presumably what we could hear when the car was cold and the throttle opened was the leakage around it. I can't reproduce the sound any more, and all we did was change the plugs, so it's a fair bet that the loose one had something to do with it!

My mate phoned up his preferred parts supplier again today (Montague and Co in Bramley, Surrey). New bonnet insulation is on order, along with a few other bits IIRC. Mirror glass for the passenger side is on order now in flat glass and no heater spec - the heater does the best part of naff all anyway, and flat glass rather than convex seems the best way forward given that it matches what was on there. Next step - setting up the engine properly now that the plugs are all good and everything else on the engine has been fixed/tightened down/cleaned/sorted (delete as appropriate).

Got to give a quick shout-out to Montague and Co here. I know Flying Spares seems to be the favoured place when media types talk about restoring Bentleys and Royces, but Monty's place (Phil Montague) would be my first port of call*. Friendly, knowledgable, and haven't come close to letting us down in any of the multitude of purchases we've had to make so far :D

* - If I could afford a Bentley rather than a Fiat Seicento that is.
 
*sigh*

So, the car went for a bit of work the other day. Bonnet insulation has been sourced and now fitted, screenwash pump sorted, the bonnet alignment was slightly off and this has now been improved. Car is fired up to go home, and.....idle speed of ~250rpm, and it stalled as soon as the owner tried to pull away.

****.

Bonnet up, and a mighty crank on the idle adjustment screw got it to stay running long enough to get home, where we did some quick-and-dirty set-up work with the mixture and idle to try and get it sorted. Not really right yet, but better than it was earlier today. Gotta love old Bentleys!
 
So, updates.

1) The engine has been set up again. Turns out we were waaaaaaaaaaay off-base with our attempts at doing it. Our friendly neighbourhood lunatic mechanic Scott went ahead and sorted it. Running very well now.

2) The rear bumper is off for some fettling. If you look at some of the photos earlier in the thread you can see where it's been mis-shapen and damaged over the years. Rear end doesn't look great without the bumper:

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Should look mighty fine with it back on having been fixed though! Repairs are ongoing, but it looks really good. Both endcaps have been straightened and repaired, the metal trim has been sorted....everything should go back where it's supposed to now.

3) More bodywork has been done. Specifically, left-side doors and part of the rear quarter panel on that side. Smoothed out the wrinkles (they were pretty obvious in some light levels, so definitely needed immediate attention), and paint matched up. The other side will need doing eventually, but right now a ******* good polish will do just about as much good. The paintshop did find evidence of several resprays, mind. We think this might be the 4th time those panels have had paint over the years.

4) Boot lock has been sorted. The owner and I had a bit of a tiff over this. He was being a moody twit saying it wasn't fixed at all after it came back. I left him to his own devices in the pub, went over to his house, opened the car up, opened up the fusebox and pushed the central locking reset switch. Job done :)

5) So, state of play. We've got to get the centre console up to look at the seat memory switches and replace the rear window isolator switch. We've got to get the leather on the front seats (drivers seat in particular) brought back up to scratch. Refit the bumper obviously. And then....well, that would be about it. Oh yes, and some of the door and window rubbers need doing. And it might be an idea to look at some new tyres next year. And we've got to add some insulation behind the door cards, sort out the drive belts for the engine bay (no aircon belt ATM as we finally twigged that the one on there was the wrong size :rolleyes:), maybe look at the rear screen and see if we can't sort the laminate out, sort out once and for all that God damned twittering sound coming from behing the dashboard (!!!)....

Could be worse I guess. No matter how many things keep cropping up with this car, we've got nothing on this poor sod's Charger....
 
Sounds Awesome!

If you ever need a bit of help with anything I'm more than happy to copy down some of the pages of the workshop manual for these beasts, or ask some of the older guys for a bit of their know-how :).
 
Joshy said:
Sounds Awesome!

If you ever need a bit of help with anything I'm more than happy to copy down some of the pages of the workshop manual for these beasts, or ask some of the older guys for a bit of their know-how :).
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We have TSD 4700 (the main workshop manual) and the parts list (TSD 6167). We don't have the '89 models electrical manual though (TSD 4848 I think it is), which has caused us some headaches. The electrical manual does seem to be some kind of holy relic - the only copies I've seen for sale have been hardback ones in Australia, and they're bloody expensive!
 
JRS said:
Flying Spares
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When I did my day shadowing a driver we collected from Flying Spares, they're just down the road on the edge of Market Bosworth.
For a small cottage industry type operation they are incredibly efficient, almost nothing is wasted. Nice bunch of people all round and really know their stuff.
The place is littered with dead Bentleys and RRs.
 
Montague and Co down in Surrey are the people we talk to for bits that we can't repair/need to replace. Very nice people who are always willing to help out us befuddled twonks trying to repair a Bentley on a less than epic budget!
 
Very nice, I always give a gentle nod towards a proper Bentley.
The steering wheels looks a huge improvement, i'm not keen on the air-freshner - 'cheapens' the car if you will. And perhaps hide the tax-disc in the corner more? I know these are silly little things in the grand scheme of things but its all about the details!
 
JRS said:
We have TSD 4700 (the main workshop manual) and the parts list (TSD 6167). We don't have the '89 models electrical manual though (TSD 4848 I think it is), which has caused us some headaches. The electrical manual does seem to be some kind of holy relic - the only copies I've seen for sale have been hardback ones in Australia, and they're bloody expensive!
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I've got easy access to the electrical manual for the '90 model year which I'd imagine would be near identical to the '89 model year?

If so, give me a shout any time you need something from it give me a shout and I'll hook you up :).
 
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